Latest research and knowledge exchange news at Bournemouth University
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government are seeking academic speakers for their inaugural spring seminar series.
Register your interest on this form (please tick the UPEN box on Q11 – when asked how you heard about the opportunity).
The Doctoral College is conducting research into postgraduate researcher communities and we would love to hear our PGRs views.
Thank you to everyone who has completed the questionnaire so far.
The questionnaire is open for just under two more weeks and should only take 10-15 minutes to complete (no log-in required).
>>>>> Click here to access the questionnaire <<<<<<
Drinks voucher available for all that complete the questionnaire.
If you have any questions please contact Natalie (nstewart@bournemouth.ac.uk) or Clare (ccutler@bournemouth.ac.uk).
As part of the improvements to the EPSRC website they have been developing a new communities section where people can:
This will allow you to get the most from their website and enable EPSRC to communicate with you more effectively. More details can be found on the EPSRC website here.
Another recent beneficiary of the current round of BU Graduate School Santander Mobility Awards is Higher Education Academy (HEA) funded PhD student David Galley. His study has attracted funding of £1000 allowing him to travel on fieldwork to other universities around the UK, seeking the perceptions of male social work students on their journeys through qualifying programmes.
The PhD thesis research of David Galley is based on male student’s perceptions of the lack of male practitioners in social work practice in the UK, why those males who undertake qualifying degrees enter the profession, and what their experiences are of what has been described as ‘pedagogically feminised’ programmes. His mixed-methods study will examine current and established perceptions which may inform future social work curricula. His research is supervised by Prof Jonathan Parker and Dr Sara Ashencaen Crabtree who have both researched and published in this area. 
Read what the Centre has been doing over the last year by clicking on the link to a PDF of our latest newsletter.
In the Centre we are rightly proud of the achievements of our students and their engagement in public activities and international opportunities, as well as those of our staff. It is through our newsletter that we keep our colleagues, here in the UK and internationally, abreast of our activities. We thought you would want to share in this.
In this edition you will find articles on student international placements in Malaysia, our hosted international week, and our new Sociology & Anthropology programme. There is information about conference presentations undertaken by Centre members, and introductions to some of the exciting and innovative social science research conducted within the Centre.
Should you want to find out more, to collaborate with members on research projects please get in touch with any of us.
British social services, without doubt, represent one of the best systems of social work throughout the world for protecting children, supporting families where circumstances and experience make them vulnerable and ensuring people with mental health problems are appropriately sustained. That notwithstanding, social work services in Britain, and in England in particular, have journeyed towards a more individualistic model of care and treatment promoted primarily in the US, and the roots of community action and practice that are truly ‘social’ have become less visible. This places our social work services, excellent as they are in key areas, on the margins of international understandings of social work.
Perhaps the changes articulated above are understandable given our affaire de Coeur with neoliberal philosophies and our celebration of the cult of the individual derived from Margaret Thatcher’s governments, perpetuated by Tony Blair and continued aggressively by the Coalition government of the day.
These changes have significant impact on people and their communities, reassigning blame from social structure to the individuals themselves. Also, there remains a potentially negative impact on social work globally. Many countries have followed the US and British social work models to develop services, sometimes as a direct result of colonialism, sometimes because of implicit global power relations. There is a legitimate concern that adoption of an individualistic approach reflects a neo-imperialist agenda, with problems resulting for those communities and groups made invisible within this process.
Our new book Professional Social Work (edited by Jonathan Parker BU & Mark Doel Sheffield Hallam) seeks to address some of these challenges. We suggest there is such a thing as ‘professional’ social work, that it must be distinct from ‘unprofessional’ social work. Our thesis is that it is imperative that we reclaim social work and its former radicalism and iconoclastically confront governmental established priorities, emphasising humanity’s social condition rather than its atomisation. In the book, we grapple with the fraught and complex definitions, practices and understandings of ‘professionalism’, exploring how the concept can be used to justify differing perspectives.
Including the work of some of the foremost thinkers in contemporary British social work (Stephen Cowden & Gurnam Singh, Pat Higham, Graham Ixer, Ray Jones, Malcolm Payne, Gillian Ruch, Steven Shardlow, Roger Smith, Neil Thompson, Sue Whist, and Marion Bogo from Canada) we promote professional social work practices that are relational, critical and reflexive, that challenge and help people and their communities to reconstruct themselves in their chosen ways.
Throughout the world societies, their citizens, and those excluded from them are facing many challenges concerning identity and citizenship, social and cultural adaptation, and responding to growing social and global inequalities. In a time of protracted economic, political and social uncertainties the BU research theme Communities, Cultures and Conflicts offers a forum for taking individual and integrated, inter-disciplinary approaches these issues. to exploring, which explicitly involves learning from past communities and peoples, we are looking to expand future research collaboration around such issues as:
Perceptions of conflict, vulnerability and the development of social welfare in the context of political violence and extremism forms part of our research theme’s work, as has consideration of difference and diversity across cultures and communities whilst considering the implications of this for contemporary fluid communities. Research has been completed in respect of Central European, Southeast Asian as well as UK communities
Our internationally renowned Disaster Management Centre offers education and training to organisations in risk assessment and risk reduction, major incident management & business continuity, and disaster recovery. We also offer one-day major incident management workshops for school bursars, headmasters and deputy headmasters (www.bournemouth.ac.uk/disaster-management).
We have clusters of researchers exploring ways of deepening democracy through developments in political communication and in the production and consumption of news. There are also research groups investigating trends in consumer culture (especially in digital consumption), studying the histories of the media industries and the communication professions as a way of understanding their present state and possible futures, and researching cultural narratives.
The multiple facets of identity, social inequality, conflict, and resource availability are narratives with a long time depth. Archaeology and anthropology have the theoretical frameworks and analytical tools to detect and contextualise these for societies of the past and, by doing so, enrich the debate about some of the fundamental and universal themes of humanity. An understanding of such aspects in the past has repercussions for our perceptions of similar issues today and vice versa.
Contributions from ‘Past Peoples and Societies’ may develop around questions such as: What are the determinants of societal continuity and change and their effect at the level of individuals and communities? How does adaptation reflect the dual, biocultural nature of humans? How do population development, migration and transitions shape communities and cultures? What is the impact of human-environment interaction and technological response?
The National Centre for Post-Qualifying Social Work is at the forefront of post-qualifying social work educational provision in England, working in partnership with 80 local authorities. We are one of the few CPD providers endorsed by The College of Social Work (TCSW) to provide post-qualifying social work education. We offer a range of CPD programmes in specialist areas such as Child Care, Vulnerable Adults, Approved Mental Health Practice, Practice Education, and Leadership and Management, and are committed to developing excellence in post-qualifying education, practice development and research. We undertake research and evaluation studies for a range of local, regional and national bodies (www.ncpqsw.com).
Prof Jonathan Parker
School of Health and Social Care
Sign up to the Communities, Culture and Conflicts research themes here:
HSC has held a practice-changing symposium on Tuesday 16th July to launch its work evaluating child protection processes across Bournemouth and Poole and hopefully Dorset. The multi-stakeholder event expressed the aim to ensure that Eileen Munro’s recommendations that parents, children and young people are at the ‘heart of the work’. (Prof Eileen Munro of LSE was commissioned by the Government in 2010-11 to review child care social work.)
Our research, commissioned by the Local Safeguarding Children Board (LSCB), was undertaken by Richard Williams, Emily Rosenorn-Lanng and Prof Jonathan Parker of the Centre for Social Work, Sociology and Social Policy, in collaboration with the LSCB, Bournemouth and Poole Local Authorities, and latterly including representatives from Dorset County Council.
We were asked to evaluate Bournemouth and Poole child protection processes, child protection strategy planning, core group meetings and the all-important involvement of parents or guardians and children and young people themselves. Unlike many negative and emotionally charged newspaper reports since the serious case review inquiries into the death of Peter Connelly, published in 2008 and 2009 (http://media.education.gov.uk/…./20to%20peter%20connelly%20dated%20november%202008.pdf http://media.education.gov.uk/…/to%20peter%20connelly%20dated%20march%202009.pdf), our research found much in which social workers in the Bournemouth and Poole area can take pride; and much that may resonate elsewhere.
There was considerable evidence of high quality social work and child safeguarding practice. The majority of respondents to our survey (both professional and familial) agreed or strongly agreed that the child protection process has made a positive difference to the family (90.5%). Forty-seven per cent (47%) of children and young people responding, indicated that their feelings of safety rose from 13% to 47% after engagement in the child protection process. Importantly, over 25% of parents or guardians indicated their willingness to contribute further to the on-going evaluation.
Of course, there were elements of the process that indicated areas for development. For instance:
1. Ensuring that minutes of Core Group meetings are disseminated to all involved
2. Ensuring the Core Group follows and monitors the Child Protection Plan
3. Discussing reports fully with Parents and Guardians before the Review Conference
4. Facilitating the involvement of all key people at the Review Conference
5. Monitoring and facilitating the inclusion of the views of Children and Young People continuously
In an innovative approach to change, the day presented findings from the research and explored with social workers, medical and health practitioners, teachers, police officers, managers, and academics to ensure this emotive and complex work was of the highest quality. A commitment was made to continue working together on these matters of great import to children and families, and to addressing some of the areas for development.
Jonathan Parker, Richard Williams, Emily Rosenorn-Lanng
BU staff can login below:
New Seed Fund for Public Engagement with Research: Last Six Funding Opportunities Available
Congratulation on new interdisciplinary publication
BU professor speaking at Aberdeen Centre for Women’s Health Research (ACWHR)
Reminder: Opportunity to get more involved in preparing Social Work and Social Policy REF 2029 submission – impact and engagement
New seed fund for public engagement with research: open for applications
Research Information Network
Horizon Europe News – December 2023